Review: Logiix Optic Alloy Case for 2nd Gen iPod Nano
For the last year and a half or so, I’ve had a black Logiix silicone skin on my 2nd generation iPod Nano, and I’ve been more than impressed with it. iPods have a tendency to scratch fairly easily, although I hadn’t seen much of this with mine, thankfully.
But it was getting to be time for a new skin, as the Nano was starting to slide out the bottom of the skin and I had visions of it bouncing off the floor sometime. Not something that you want to have happen.
So I decided that I’d see what I could do about picking up a new silicone skin, preferably something other than black, as it was time for a change. Headed to the store where I’d purchased my last one, and they didn’t seem to have any for the 2nd generation Nanos. Lots for the 3rd gen, but I didn’t feel like buying a new iPod just to get a skin for it, y’know?
As I was getting ready to leave, I saw that they were on a different rack, kind of out of the way, so I spun the rack around looking for something that caught my eye. That turned out to be the price. Silicone skins were marked down from $12.99 to just 99 cents. Cool. Sometimes obsolescence can be a good thing. I wound up buying three, a Logiix clear silicone, a black iSeal skin, and a Logixx Optic Alloy case, which was the expensive option ($1.99)
I put the clear Logiix skin on after I bought them and it worked out about as well as its black predecessor had. The one complaint that I have about silicone skins is that you lose a fair bit of sensitivity in the click wheel. The center button will be fine, but dragging my finger on the wheel has been sluggish or even non-responsive at times.
So this morning I opened up the Optic Alloy case to see if it was any different. First thing I noticed was that, being a hard case, the screen protector is built in. I don’t have much in the way of scratching on the display of my Nano, and it’s nice to see that I won’t be getting any more in the foreseeable future.
I slid the Nano into the case, and gave it a spin. The whole thing feels a lot more substantial, and not quite as ‘delicate’ as the Nano felt when it wasn’t encased in the silicone skin. The Nano doesn’t slide around inside the case like it did with the metal one that I bought for my holidays last year. The wheel isn’t covered, so it’s as responsive as I would expect it to be if the device wasn’t encased. The edges are rubber coated as well, so I don’t feel like it’s going to slip out of my hand when I’m trying to find something else to listen to.
Had I known about this case a year and a half ago, I’d have picked one up and used it all along. Of course, then it was probably $39.99, but it would have been worth it.
If you’re not ready to be upgrading your 2nd generation Nano to a 3rd gen, or even a Touch, this would be the case I’d recommend picking up for your device, and quickly if at all possible - I wouldn’t imagine that too many retailers are going to be stocking 2nd gen accessories for too much longer.
I’ve emailed Logiix to ask them if they’ll continue to make the cases available for order online, but the response from them was that the case was no longer available, but new designs were being worked on.
If you’re able to pick up an Optic Alloy case from Logiix for your 2nd gen Nano, I highly recommend doing so. This the only case that I’m going to be keeping on mine until it’s time to upgrade it to something newer.
Upgrading Vista to SP1
Ever since Vista was released, and some hardware ceased to work with it, I’ve been waiting for SP1 of the OS, simply because it was said that it would contain more drivers, so there was a small chance that stuff that was busted might come back from the dead. Or, there’s a possibility that it wouldn’t make a difference at all. Only way to find out would be to install it and see. So I got a copy from MSDN and gave it a go. We’ll most likely be installing it on our Vista machines at work anyway, so best to get a little experience with it.
It goes without saying, but here it is anyway - please back up all data on your machine that you can’t afford to lose. There shouldn’t be any problems with running the upgrade, but wouldn’t you rather just feel safe that everything was backed up, just in case?
The whole thing really is fairly straightforward, only about 4 boxes before you just walk away from it and let it do its thing.
Microsoft mentions that it’ll take about an hour to run the complete upgrade, and, quite surprisingly, they weren’t far off. The whole thing was done in about 70 minutes. Ironic, when you consider that I’ve seen Vista estimate that it would take 18,000 *days* to finish copying or moving something on the system. Evidently Microsoft’s time estimation algorithm has gotten a bit better 
So, after running the upgrade, what’s the final verdict? For myself, installing the upgrade didn’t revive any of my dead hardware (scanner, printer), although I did find workarounds for both that allowed me to use both under Vista. But that’s a couple of future posts.
If nothing else, patching your machine with SP1 when it comes out as part of Windows Update will get all currently available patches on your machine, and there’s rarely a downside to that. A lot of people didn’t want to put SP2 on their XP machine when it came out, and I think you’d be hard pressed to find anyone today who would tell you why. It just makes the machine run better.
And in the long run, SP1 will be better for your Vista box as well.
Applications Broken After Upgrading to Vista SP1
Microsoft has posted about a number of applications that are know to either break completely or have reduced functionality after a machine is upgrade to Service Pack 1 for Vista. Most of the applications are security-related in nature and can either be blocked from starting, do not launch at all or can have reduced functionality.
Of those listed, BitDefender AV, Zone Alarm Security Suite, and the New York Times Reader are likely to be the most commonly recognized applications.
To say this is a common thing just among Windows users would just be wrong, though. The current release of Apple’s OS X 10.5.2 points to a number of problems with apps getting borked after the upgrade.
So before you go jumping on Microsoft, please realize that they don’t write the apps that no longer work after applying the upgrade, and perhaps the companies that developed these apps should have confirmed that they worked under SP1 themselves.
But then, it’s Microsoft’s fault that HP didn’t write new drivers for your printer when you upgraded to Vista too, isn’t it? </sarcasm>
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